ORLAN

By Maëlle Galerie

Curator: Rolando J. Carmona.

In the occasion of Marbella Art Fair, we show a video by the famous french artist ORLAN. All the world know her because of « Canal art » which is committed to demystifying and questioning the traditional concepts of beauty.

This video projection is presented to support the project « FOCUS VENEZUELA » a special proposal by Maëlle Galerie, curated by Rolando J. Carmona.

ORLAN is one of the most famous french artist internationally known.

She creates sculptures, photographs, performances, videos, and videogames, augmented reality, using scientific and medical technics like surgery and biogenetic. Those are only mediums for her, the idea prevails and the materiality pursues.

ORLAN makes her own body the medium, the raw material, and the visual support of her work. It takes place as the “public debate”. She is a major figure of the body art and of “carnal art” as she used to define it in her 1989 manifesto.

Her commitment and her liberty are an integral part of her work. She defends innovative, interrogative and subversive positions, in her entire artwork. ORLAN changes constantly and radically the datas, which disrupt conventions, and “ready-made thinking”. She is opposed to the natural determinism, social and politic and to all domination forms, male supremacy, religion, cultural segregation and racism, etc.

Always mixed with humor, often-on parody or even grotesque, her provocative artworks can shock because she shakes up the pre-established codes.

ORLAN won the E-reputation award, designating the most observed and followed artist on the Web.

MANIFESTO OF CARNAL ART,1989

DEFINITION

CARNAL ART IS SELF-PORTRAITURE IN THE CLASSICAL SENSE, BUT REALISED THROUGH THE POSSIBILITY OF TECHNOLOGY. IT SWINGS BETWEEN DEFIGURATION AND REFIGURATION. ITS INSCRIPTION IN THE FLESH IS A FUNCTION OF OUR AGE. THE BODY HAS BECOME A “MODIFIED READY-MADE”, NO LONGER SEEN AS THE IDEAL IT ONCE REPRESENTED ;THE BODY IS NOT ANYMORE THIS IDEAL READY-MADE IT WAS SATISFAYING TO SIGN.

DISTINCTION

AS DISTINCT FROM “BODY ART”, CARNAL ART DOES NOT CONCEIVE OF PAIN AS

REDEMPTIVE OR AS A SOURCE OF PURIFICATION. CARNAL ART IS NOT INTERESTED IN THE PLASTIC-SURGERY RESULT, BUT IN THE PROCESS OF SURGERY, THE SPECTACLE AND DISCOURSE OF THE MODIFIED BODY WHICH HAS BECOME THE PLACE OF A PUBLIC DEBATE.

ATHEISM

CARNAL ART DOES NOT INHERIT THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION, IT RESISTS IT! CARNAL ART ILLUMINATES THE CHRISTIAN DENIAL OF BODY-PLEASURE AND EXPOSES ITS WEAKNESS IN THE FACE OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. CARNAL ART REPUDIATES THE TRADITION OF SUFFERING AND MARTYRDOM, REPLACING RATHER THAN REMOVING, ENHANCING RATHER THAN DIMINISHING – CARNAL ART IS NOT SELF-MUTILATION.

CARNAL ART TRANSFORMS THE BODY INTO LANGUAGE, REVERSING THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF THE WORD MADE FLESH ; THE FLESH IS MADE WORD. ONLY THE VOICE OF ORLAN REMAINS UNCHANGED. THE ARTIST WORKS ON REPRESENTATION

CARNAL ART FINDS THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE AGONY OF CHILDBIRTH TO BE

ANACHRONISTIC AND RIDICULOUS. LIKE ARTAUD, IT REJECTS THE MERCY OF GOD -HENCEFORTH WE SHALL HAVE EPIDURALS, LOCAL ANAESTHETICS AND MULTIPLE ANALGESICS ! (HURRAY FOR THE MORPHINE !) VIVE LA MORPHINE ! (DOWN WITH THE PAIN !) A BAS LA DOULEUR !

PERCEPTION

I CAN OBSERVE MY OWN BODY CUT OPEN WITHOUT SUFFERING !….I CAN SEE MYSELF ALL THE WAY DOWN TO MY VISCERA, A NEW STAGE OF GAZE. “I CAN SEE TO THE HEART OF MY LOVER AND IT’S SPLENDID DESIGN HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SYMBOLICS MANNERED USUALLY DRAWN.

DARLING, I LOVE YOUR SPLEEN, I LOVE YOUR LIVER, I ADORE YOUR PANCREAS AND THE LINE OF YOUR FEMUR EXCITES ME.

FREEDOM

CARNAL ART ASSERTS THE INDIVIDUAL INDEPENDENCE OF THE ARTIST. IN THAT SENSE IT RESISTS GIVENS AND DICTATS. THIS IS WHY IT HAS ENGAGED THE SOCIAL, THE MEDIA, (WHERE IT DISRUPTS RECEIVED IDEAS AND CAUSE SCANDAL), AND WILL EVEN REACHED AS FAR AS THE JUDICIARY (TO CHANGE THE ORLAN’S NAME).

CLARIFICATION

CARNAL ART IS NOT AGAINST AESTHETIC SURGERY, BUT AGAINST THE STANDARDS THAT PERVADE IT, PARTICULARLY, IN RELATION TO THE FEMALE BODY, BUT ALSO TO THE MALE BODY. CARNAL ART MUST BE FEMINIST, IT IS NECESSARY. CARNAL ART IS NOT ONLY ENGAGES IN AESTHETIC SURGERY, BUT ALSO IN DEVELOPMENTS IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY QUESTIONING THE STATUS OF THE BODY AND POSING ETHICAL PROBLEMS.

STYLE

CARNAL ART LOVES PARODY AND THE BAROQUE, THE GROTESQUE AND THE EXTREME.

CARNAL ART OPPOSES THE CONVENTIONS THAT EXERCISE CONSTRAINT ON THE HUMAN BODY AND THE WORK OF ART.

LITA CABELLUT by GUSTAVO MONTOYA

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(Sariñena, 1961) is a multidisciplinar spanish artist that works with óleum on canvas, drawings on paper, sculpture, photography, poetry, visual poems and videos. Her origin is ghipsy, she was raised in Barcelona and lives in La Haya since she was 19 years old. She is recognized by her paintings, she works with canvas of big size using a characteristical contemporary variation of the fresco technique. In 2011 she received the Arts and Painting Prize of the Ghypsy Culture Institut due to her dedicated work to ghypsy culture around the globe. In 2015 she was considered by the specialized magazine Artprice as one of the contemporary artists most valued of the world, situating her at the number 333 just behind Miquel Barceló and Juan Muñoz from the “top 500”, becoming the most valued spanish woman artist.

ARTIST OF PROXIMITY: MARIA CARRION (SOTOGRANDE)

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Carrión inspires herself in the effects of light on the sea. Forms from the nature imperceptibly appear on stage ignored by the naked eye. Isolated from their environment through the photographic camera and coated by pictoric value, these forms that belong to the ordinary, suddenly make an extraordinary sense.The characteristics of the materials – their luminocity and ductility – define also the contents of the works. It is about a confluence of sensitive paradoxes: the intangible on the physical; the invisible on the visible; the eternal on the transient. At the same time, through the structure, and iconography of her works, the artist make alusion to a long tradicion of Christian Art, recovering pictorical models as the retablum and symbolic motives like the fish. In this way the artist tries to reconciliate the historical dialogue between the arts and the Christian faith with the contemporary culture.

GENALGUACIL PUEBLO MUSEO

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Genalguacil, museum town of Malaga province, situated 30km from Estepona at Genal Valley, is one of the little towns with just five hundred habitants which conforms the Ronda’s sierra. Its peculiar urban structure, heritage of the previous Arab population, is escalonated, adapting itself to the sharp terrain that has held it down for centuries. Distinguishing itself among the green of the valley stands the white hamlet decorated with pieces of art.

The town hall has organized the biannual Meetings of Art of the Genal Valley, with great success due to the high quality of the pieces exposed and the concurrency of participants, becoming the stage for a creative experience where life and nature merge in coexistence and a cooperation space.

The pieces that are placed permanently on squares and streets are converting the town in an open-air museum. There are more than a hundred painters, sculptors, photographers, ceramists, from different nationalities, who left their imprint by showing their sculptures to open air or expose their work at the principal museum, that is about to open. As a result streets and corners, squares and nooks, walls and ceilings have turned Genalguacil in an authentic sculptures forest and open-air museum.

Isidro López-Aparicio
Memorias de Genalguacil
Instalación, 2016

EMILIO MACHADO BY STARLITE
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Emilio Machado (1936) in three hundred words: Canarian islands: Antonio González Suárez, gave me a box of watercolors to paint a vine tree for days; evidently, i got tired and painted mi first work: a peacock. Barcelona: i was obsessed with two towns Barcelona and New York: with 16 years i asked (to my father) to let me go to New York, but he got scared; in Barcelona i decided to study architecture and i had professors that understood that what i liked more was to paint. Dali:i used to see him painting and i said: ¡Good heaven!; he used to speak with me a lot about the sea, about how to paint it and i learned technical aspects. he was attached to me because i was “well educated”; he said: “Canary ¿Would you come with me to Paris?” and i went. Mexico: i was marked by the light, the concept of life and death. New York: a place you love the first day or you hate for ever, i said: ¡this is a beauty! and i stayed living there. Alberto Vázquez Figueroa sobre Machado:“to Emilio, like his mother, what he enjoys is to stay inside the cave”Emilio sobre Alberto:“he is a human being who i appreciate a lot, he is a great man and a friend from the childhood”. Architecture: has marked my work, any person that see my paintings knows i am an architect. Literature: my house is a library, the literature has had an enormous influence in me. Music: Cuixart used to say that my painting reminded him to Prokofiev’s music and, after listening to it, i said: yes, in my work there is something of this. White: when you paint over the shadow, the white color shines and appears like the light that emerges from the darkness. Conviction: what the human being needs is elegance, conviction on what he does, in what he feels and to be totally committed to it.

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